


The Blue Carboy

by owlcroft



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2014-10-21
Packaged: 2018-02-22 00:06:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2487224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlcroft/pseuds/owlcroft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's nearing Christmas and John has a surprise visitor, one that leads to heartache and loss. Sherlock does what he does best. Set approximately ten months after Mary Morstan Watson's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Blue Carboy

Arthur Hampton, a tall, burly man in his early 40's, strong and fit-looking with greying hair and a habitually cheerful expression, jogged up the steps of his club in Grosvenor Square. "Afternoon," he called to the concierge at the reception desk. "I had a text saying there’s some mail for me.” 

"Major Hampton," the concierge said, looking pleased, "Welcome, sir. Yes, sir. We've been holding a package for you, and here's your post." The concierge, whose name was Jameson, reached into a numbered pigeonhole mail slot behind the reception desk and passed a large manila envelope to Hampton.

“Thanks, Jimmy,” said Hampton, opening the envelope and glancing at the mail inside. Jameson disappeared into the offices behind the reception desk and returned struggling with a heavy wooden case. As he wrestled it to the desk one of the plastic straps that secured the lid parted with a twang.

Hampton looked up from his mail. “Oh, sorry, let me give you a hand with that,” he said. He hefted the case with ease. This month's Carboy Club," he explained.  "Just in time for the holidays.  Wonder what they've sent this time.  It's pot luck, you know," he added. 

"Yes, sir," said Jameson.  "We have several other members who subscribe.  Will you be staying for dinner tonight?"  

"Love to, Jimmy, but there’s no time," Hampton said.  "I want to fit in a visit to an old friend of mine before I head home, and we'll have some catching up to do."  He tucked the case under his arm, trotted back outside and hailed a cab as he stepped onto the pavement. “Baker Street,” he said, climbing in.  “221 Baker Street.”

 

0 0 0 0 0

 

John answered the door and his face broke into a delighted grin.  “Hamp!” he cried.

“Watson the Lionhearted,” Hampton said boisterously, putting out his hand. In the other he held a large, cobalt-colored bottle of alcohol.

John took his hand in both of his and they shook warmly. “Come in, come in,” he said, ushering his old friend inside and clapping him on the back.  “Come on up.  Let me take your coat.  What brings you to London?  Is Lizzie with you?  How is she?”

Hampton laughed.  “I’m batching it today,” he said.  “Had to get some pension business straightened out.  You know how it is.  Always some reason why they can’t pay you, and this time they wanted some forms signed in person.”

John gestured to the leather Corbusier seat.  “Sit down, sit down.  Can I get you something?  Got the shopping done just yesterday, so there’s actually something in.  Tea?  Coffee?”

“I’m all sorted,” Hampton said.  “Thanks.  Actually, I came by to bring you this--” he handed John the bottle of brandy “--as a way to say ‘thank you.’”

John cocked his head.  “For what?”

“‘For what?’” Hampton repeated.  “For Lizzie’s health, of course.”

John brushed that aside with a modest gesture.

“No, really,” Hampton said.  “If you hadn’t recommended Doctor Houghton for a second opinion I don’t know where we’d be.  She’d have gone ahead with the surgery and all...We’re so grateful for your advice.  She made me promise to tell you--again.”

“Hamp, really,” John said.  “I just made a phone call.  It was nothing.  Any doctor would have done the same.”

“Ours didn’t.”

“Well, any decent doctor.”  John accepted the bottle and turned it in his hands. The big glass bottle of cobalt-coloured, opaque glass was adorned just below the neck with a gold medallion engraved with a flying goose. “I don’t think I’ve heard of this brand before.  Blue Goose?  Where’d you find it?”

“It’s a subscription,” Hampton said.  “They send four bottles of something every quarter.  Brandy, scotch, cognac:  you know.  Different things each time, but from the same company.  It’s Russian, if I remember correctly. Eastern European, at any rate.  They like their geese, the Russkies.  Blue Goose, Black Goose, Red Goose--depending on what kind of liquor it is.” 

“So,” John said, having put the bottle in the kitchen and returned to his arm chair.  “How are you both?”  

“Great,” Hampton said.  “Doing great, thanks to you.”

“Stop it.”

“Listen,” Hampton said, lowering his voice.  “What about you?  How are you holding up?”

“Yeah, good.  I’m good,” John said, and thought he managed to sound more or less like he meant it.  “First holiday since...Well.  But there’s always something going on around here, you know.  To keep me busy.”  

Downstairs the door slammed.  “John!”  

“And here he is now,” John said.  “My flatmate.”  

“Oh, right!” Hampton said.  “The detective?  The one on your blog?  I’ve been looking forward to--”  

Sherlock sprang up the stairs two at a time and bounded into the room carrying a tattooed human arm.  He had seen the strange coat hanging in the entry and smelt the faint whiff of aftershave, so he knew perfectly well that John had a visitor--Mrs. Hudson didn’t have callers who wore aftershave--but John’s visitors were invariably dull and he himself had a very exciting piece of news.

“John!” he said again as he hit the landing.  “Molly’s got a corpse with three gunshot wounds and a head injury that--” 

“Sherlock,” John cut him off with a look.  “Sherlock, this is an old mate of mine from the army.  Major Arthur Hampton.  Hamp, this is my friend Sherlock Holmes.”  

Hampton had stood up to greet Sherlock in all good faith, but now he was staring at the arm and rapidly losing enthusiasm. He had already put out his hand to shake Sherlock’s, however, and he was a little puzzled how to avoid actual contact. “Call me Hamp,” he said.

Sherlock flicked his eyes over Hampton: married, came down from Aylesbury on the 8:13 a.m. train, non-smoker, British Army retired, one child no more than three years old, probably a girl, had made three--no, four stops in London before Baker Street:  Boring.  “I have to refrigerate my arm.”  

John didn’t even bat an eye.  “Put it in plastic first,” he called, as Sherlock headed for the kitchen.  He looked at Hampton and said apologetically, “Sorry.  He’s easily distracted.”  

“Yeah, listen,” Hampton said.  “I’d better be off.  I left the cab waiting with the shopping and I’ve got one more thing to pick up for Lizzie. Besides, I hate to wait until the last train.  There’s one out in an hour, and that will just give me time to pick up her gift.”

“Sure?” John said.  “You can stay for dinner if you like. We’d love to have you.”

“Oh, God, here we go,” Sherlock muttered from the kitchen.

Hampton glanced over, saw him place the plastic-wrapped arm in the refrigerator. “No, no,” he said.  “Lizzie will have supper waiting when I get there, and if I spoil my appetite she’ll take my head off.”

“Well, I’ll see you out then,” John said.  “Give Lizzie my love,” he said at the door.  “Tell her ‘Merry Christmas’ for me, and that she’s a saint for putting up with a prat like you all these years.”  

Hampton laughed and clapped him on the back.  “You take care of yourself, Lionheart.”

 

0 0 0 0 0

 

John stood at the sink filling a large pot with water when Sherlock emerged from his bedroom and paused in the doorway to the kitchen. Dressing gown over shirt and slacks, John saw, glancing at him, and barefoot.

"Not going back to the morgue tonight, then?"

"He'll keep," Sherlock said. 

John indicated the refrigerator with a nod. “And the arm?”

“The arm?  Oh--an experiment.  I want to examine the difference between a tattoo applied pre- and post-mortem at the cellular level.”

He peered into the filling pot, then swept John up and down. It was quick--very quick, done in the time it took to blink--and most people would never notice it, but John did. Sherlock had been giving him these extra once-overs for ten months, ever since John moved back to Baker Street. In almost no other way did he indicate that he was aware of John’s loss. Sherlock could be a rude, socially tone-deaf bastard, but he was as sensitive as a cat with those he liked, and John was grateful that Sherlock, at least, didn't burden him with sympathetic looks and expressions of concern.

"Pasta okay?" John asked. The question was strictly pro forma; Sherlock was largely indifferent to mealtimes and if he thought there was a way to exist on air John reckoned that he'd probably try it.

"Hm? Fine," Sherlock supposed. An arch expression crossed his face then. “‘Lionheart’?” he said.

“Never mind,” John replied.

 

0 0 0 0 0

 

Sherlock didn’t actually own any tattoo equipment, just the arm, so for the moment he had nothing on which to experiment. He stood at the sitting room window, tuning his violin. John hung the dishtowel over the back of a chair to dry.  “I’m going to try this brandy Hamp brought,” he said.  “Would you like a glass?”

“Not just now.” 

John shrugged, took down just the one glass, and poured. Nothing happened.  He looked at the bottle and made a slight swirling motion with it. There was definitely something in there, but the opaque glass hid the contents.  He tried again.  This time the bottle produced a slight trickle of brandy, then nothing.  John frowned at it. “What the hell?” He held the bottle up to the light and tilted it, trying to see inside.  “There’s something in there,” he said. 

“Brandy, I expect,” Sherlock replied.  

“No, actually.  Well, yeah, but I mean there’s something in the bottle, blocking it.”

Sherlock perked up a bit.  “Let me see.”

John demonstrated, tipping the bottle into the glass but with the same result. A little trickle of brandy and then nothing.

Sherlock took the bottle. He stood it on the table and studied it from every angle.  Picked it up again, sniffed the cap.  Licked the opening.  Turned it about and looked at the underside.  Peered into the mouth, holding the bottle to the light.  Upended it over the sink.  Another irregular trickle of brandy, then nothing.  He wrapped the bottle in a towel.  “Stand back,” he said, and turning his face away he cracked the bottle hard against the side of the sink.  

“Sherlock--” John started to object but stopped when he saw that something in addition to shattered glass had fallen into the sink: a wad of plastic blister wrap with something white enclosed inside. 

Sherlock looked at it lying there in the sink for a moment before finally picking it up.  He carried it to the table and used a scalpel to delicately slice away the clear packing tape securing the blister wrap.  He peeled the wrap away to reveal a zip-sealed, clear plastic bag containing something wrapped in jeweler’s cotton.

“What the hell...?” John breathed.  “What is that?”

Sherlock didn’t answer, but he was vibrant with interest now.  He carefully sliced open the baggie, then the tape securing the cotton, and used the scalpel to push down the edges of the cotton and reveal a clear blue, oval-cut gemstone about the size of a hen’s egg.  He sat back in his chair, steepled his hands together, and considered it silently.

“Is that a diamond?” John asked.

“It’s the Great Khan.”

“The what?”

“The Great Khan.  The most valuable blue topaz in the world.”

“Oh, come on.  You – you’re serious,” John said, not fully believing him. 

“John:  this is the Great Khan.  It disappeared from the the New Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg in 1909 and hasn’t been seen since.  No one knows who took it, or where it’s been all this time.”

“What, and it just turns up today in a bottle of brandy?  In our flat? That’s ridiculous.”  John looked at Sherlock, who was clearly not having him on, and then back at the stone. It was far too big to have fit into the mouth of the bottle, he realized.  “How the hell did it get in there?”

Sherlock went to the sink and picked up a large piece of the broken glass--the piece with the medallion on it.  He held it under the magnifying light, turned it over.  “Here,” he said, pointing.  “Where the medallion is.  Someone’s cut a hole in the bottle, dropped the stone in, and then sealed the hole with the medallion.”  

“But why?”

“To smuggle it into England, at a guess.”  

“Oh, hold on,” John objected.  “Hamp’s no smuggler.”  

“Didn’t say he was.  He doesn’t have to be.  Probably didn’t know it was there, unless you and he are much better friends than you’ve said.”  They considered the stone as it glittered on the cotton.  

“What’s it worth?

Sherlock wasn’t completely sure about that.  “Somewhere in the neighborhood of two million pounds,” he said.  “Give or take.”  

“For a topaz?  Come on, Sherlock.  That’s...that’s a semi-precious stone.  It’s not like it’s a diamond.  Why would it be worth so much money?”  

“Age and provenance,” Sherlock said.  “It was mined during the reign of Ghengis Khan.  The story is that he owned it for a time, until it was stolen from him.  That alone makes it valuable.  Then there’s the color.”

“But you see blue topaz in jewelry shops all the time.”

“That’s almost never real blue topaz,” Sherlock said.  “It’s clear topaz, or grey, or yellow, that’s been irradiated to change the stone’s color centers.”  

“Irradiated?”

“Yes.  Topaz gets its color differently from other stones.  Sapphires are blue because they contain trace elements like iron and titanium.  Other stones get their color from the elements that make up their chemical composition.  Topaz gets its color from imperfections in the lattice structure of the crystal itself.  When it’s exposed to fast neutrons during irradiation its color centers are changed and the stone turns blue.”  He held the stone up to the light.  “That’s not the same color that you see in most jewelry store topaz, is it?”

“No...No, those are more of a sky blue color.  This is kind of...it’s got a sort of grey cast to it.”  

“London Blue,” Sherlock said.  “It’s the most popular color of topaz, but it’s also almost impossible to find in a naturally-occurring stone.  The Great Khan is the largest naturally-occurring London Blue topaz ever found.”

“And it’s sitting on our kitchen table.”  

“Mm.”   

“Well, I guess we’d better turn it in, then.”  

Sherlock didn’t reply.  He frowned at the rock, thinking.  

“But who would we give it to?” John wondered.  “The police?  A museum?”  Sherlock was still focused on the rock.  “Sherlock?”  

“Where did your friend say that bottle came from?”

“Ah...he has a subscription to a kind of liquor club.”  

“Liquor club.” 

“Yeah.  You pay a subscription fee, and then every three months they send you a crate with...three or four bottles, I think he said...of different kinds of high-end alcohol.  You know:  cognac, brandy, whiskey, stuff like that.  It’s different each time.”  

“But where did it come from?”  

“Well, he has them delivered to his club, so he must have picked it up today when he was in town.”  

“No,” Sherlock said impatiently.  “What’s the name of the company that sends the liquor?”  

It was John’s turn to frown.  “I don’t know.  The bottle said ‘Blue Goose’ or something, but I think that’s the brand. I don’t think it’s the same as the company that runs the subscription club. You don’t think Hamp is smuggling gems into the country?  Sherlock:  There’s no way.”  

“I think he didn’t know that the stone was in the bottle.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s not involved in getting the bottles into England.” 

“Sherlock--”

“But I doubt it.”

“Okay, then.”

Sherlock was still frowning at the stone.  “The Great Khan,” he mused. “After all these years.  You know, it’s famous because it’s blue, but it really should be infamous for being red.” 

“What does that mean?”  

“It means murder only ever has two motives, John:  money and power.  A stone like this can give a man both.  People have been killing each other over this little scrap of aluminium and fluorine for eight hundred years, and they’re not going to stop now.”  He looked up at John.  

“You think Hamp is in danger?”  

“I think that whoever holds that stone will always be in danger.”  

“I’ll call him,” John said at once, and reached into his pocket for his phone.  As he withdrew it Sherlock stopped him.

“John, wait.  Don’t tell him why you’re calling.  Just tell him that you need to meet with him and that it’s important.  Say nothing about the stone.”

John knew better than to distrust Sherlock’s advice about things like that.  Hampton’s phone rang twice, then sent him to voice mail.  “Hamp?  It’s John.  Listen, call me when you get this message, will you?  It’s important.  I’ll have the phone on late.  Just call me, please.”  He ended the call and looked at Sherlock.  

“Do you know his club?” Sherlock asked.  

“Yeah.  Yeah, it’s The Officers’ Club.”  

“Grosvenor Square,” Sherlock said at once.  “Let’s go.”  

“You’re not leaving that out on the table,” John said, indicating the gem.

“No,” Sherlock said. He took his arm from the fridge, unwrapped it, and placed the stone into the crook of the elbow.  He replaced the wrapping and put the arm next to the eggs.

“Well, you couldn’t give me two million pounds to touch it now,” John said.

 

0 0 0 0 0

 

The Officers’ Club was busy that time of night with members socializing and having dinner. In spite of the soaring, ornately-carved walnut ceiling and the grand size of the main room, the rich woods and warm tones of the decor lent it comfortable, homey feeling. Swags of pine boughs punctuated with red ribbons had been looped from the bannisters and chair railings. A fifteen-foot Christmas tree glittered at one end of the main gathering room, its colorful glass ornaments catching and reflecting the light from the fire flickering cheerfully in the massive granite hearth at the opposite end of the hall. Club members milled in and through the great hall, generating a continual buzz of conversation that was punctuated frequently by the sound of laughter.

To the right of the main entry door stood a huge, old-fashioned reception desk of the type used in the better sorts of hotels. Behind the desk was a wall of pigeonholes, each with a small brass tag engraved with a number. Below the wall of pigeonholes the usual office supplies were arrayed on a counter: stapler, pens, a calculator, scissors, tape. The space below the counter was taken up with cabinetry that concealed more supplies and several file drawers.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” the concierge on duty said as John and Sherlock approached the desk. “How can I help you tonight?”

Sherlock smiled. “I’d like to leave a message for Arthur Hampton,” he said.

“Major Hampton,” the concierge said. “Of course.”

Sherlock produced a scrap of paper from his pocket, scribbled a few lines on it, folded it in half, and handed it to the concierge. 

The concierge dropped the message, still folded, into an envelope, then tapped briefly on his computer. He hit the return key and a printer under the counter produced a small adhesive label with a number on it: 5213E, Sherlock saw. The concierge affixed the label to the envelope and placed the envelope in the pigeonhole with the matching 5213E number.

Sherlock smiled at him again. “That’s a rather complicated way to leave a message, isn’t it?” he said pleasantly. Mr. Conversational. Mr. Friendly. “Surely you could just put it in the slot? Wouldn’t that be easier?”

“Well, sir,” said the concierge, “it’s the best way we’ve found to maintain our members’ privacy.”

Sherlock looked puzzled and as stupid as he was capable of. “I don’t understand. If you enter the message into the computer, surely it’s not private any more?”

“Oh, no, sir, we don’t enter the message contents into the ledger, just the fact that a message came in. We record the incoming message in our ledger with the date and time. Then we print out a little sticker with the member ID, put the message or post in an envelope, and put the sticker on the envelope. Then we match the sticker to the box number, which also has the member’s ID on it. That way no one can walk by and see mail stacked up and associate it with a name, and there’s always a record of our having received the messages and mail.”

“Ingenious,” Sherlock said. “I suppose you don’t bother doing the same with packages, then, since you could hardly put one in a mail slot?”

“Oh, no, sir. Package deliveries are handled the same way.”

“With stickers. Yes, I see. Well,” he said, appearing to lose all interest in the topic and turning to John, “you said you wanted to fill out a membership application, right?”

“Oh, right. Yes,” John said. “Hamp was telling me just today about all the advantages of joining; said he’d be glad to sponsor me getting in but that I needed to come by to apply. Is there a form or something?”

“Yes, sir,” says the concierge. “Let me just find one for you.” As he turned away from the counter Sherlock instantly reached over and adjusted the monitor’s angle slightly. The most likely explanation for Hampton getting the wrong crate, he knew, was that the intended recipient had a visually similar box number or that its physical location was near Hampton’s. It was a simple matter for him to scan the ledger and see that a Philip Martin used account number 5213F.

John glanced at him as he accepted the application form, but Sherlock gave a minute shake of his head and John addressed the concierge again. “Listen, Hamp was telling me about your billiards room. Swears up and down that it’s better than the one at Black’s. I bet him twenty pounds that I wouldn’t like it as well. Do you think I could take a look at it?”

“Of course, sir,” the concierge said. “All visitors have to be escorted, I’m afraid, unless they’re with a member,” he added apologetically, "but I can take you there. It’s just down the hall.”

“Great. Thanks,” John said. “Sherlock? You going to be okay here?”

“Hm? Oh, yes, I’ll just wait,” Sherlock said, sounding bored. The instant the concierge’s back was turned he reached over the counter and caught up the keyboard. John and the concierge weren't even to the billiards room before he’d accessed the information he wanted. He replaced the keyboard and leant casually against the counter with his back to the desk, tapping his foot. John and the concierge returned a few minutes later.

“Looks like I lost the bet,” John said cheerfully to Sherlock. He waved the application form at the concierge. “I’ll just get this to Hamp, then,” he said. “Thanks very much.”

“Thank you, sir. And merry Christmas.”

Outside on the pavement they stopped to wait for a cab. “Anything?” John asked.

Sherlock shook his head. “A name and an address--”

“Great--”

“No. The address is a fake and the name’s probably an alias.”

“How do you know?”

“Philip Martin. 34 Lascelles Terrace, Leeds,” Sherlock said. “There is no 34 Lascelles Terrace in Leeds.”

“So we’ve got nothing.”

“No. We know that Hampton’s box number is 5213E. ‘Martin’s’ is 5213F. It’s an obvious recipe for confusion. ‘E’ and ‘F’ are visually similar enough that at a time like this, with the holidays coming up and people coming and going at all hours, the clerks are busy and harassed. It would be easy for one to hand your friend the wrong box.”

“Okay...”

“So the odds of him not knowing about the topaz have improved.”

“Good.”

“Yes, but it was also quite simple for me to get Mr. Martin’s address off the computer. It wouldn’t be any more difficult for Martin to get Hampton’s address, and Hampton’s, I assume, isn’t fake.”

“Oh, Christ,” John said. “You think...?”

“Call him again.”

This time John was sent straight to voice mail. He looked at Sherlock and shook his head.

“Does he still keep a land line phone?” Sherlock asked.

John checked his contacts. “Yeah,” he said.

“Hampton residence,” said a voice after the sixth ring.

John didn’t recognize the voice. “Hello? Yes, sorry, I’m trying to reach Arthur Hampton...Have I got the right number?”

“Who’s calling, please?”

“I’m a friend.” John said, apprehension growing inside him.

Sherlock’s watching him closely, but he didn’t have to hear the other end of the conversation to know what was happening. “Who is this?” John asked.

“Sergeant Benschoff, Aylesbury police.”

“Oh, God. What happened? Is Hamp all right?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Tell me, dammit--” John began, but then the line went dead.

 

* * * * *

The train ride to Buckinghamshire was just a little over an hour, but John thought it would never end. For the police to answer Hamp’s phone meant something very bad had happened, he knew, but he had no way to guess the nature of the disaster and his imagination tormented him. Sherlock wouldn’t theorize without a basis for it, and while he couldn’t guess what the detective thought about to fill the waiting, he didn’t try to draw him out and they sat there in silence. From the train station a cab took them to Hampton’s house, and even two blocks away they could see the flashing blue and red lights of the emergency vehicles reflected off the bare tree limbs and the other houses. Yellow crime scene tape circled the front yard and two ambulances stood with their doors open and lights flashing at the curb. The emergency vehicles and the dense crowd of gawking, gossiping neighbors, gathered to stare in spite of the snow and cold, required the driver to stop several houses away.

John shoved through the crowd toward one of several officers guarding the tape line, then caught sight of Hampton’s wife, Elizabeth, being tended by an EMT in the back of one of the ambulances. “Oh, my God. Lizzie,” he said. He started toward her but the officer put out an arm and blocked his path. “I’m a doctor,” he said impatiently. “I’m her doctor. Please. Lizzie--”

She heard him call, looked up, and began stumbling toward him. John brushed the policeman aside and ran to her, hugged her. Oh, God, Lizzie,” he whispered. “Lizzie. What happened? Are you alright? Where’s Hamp?” 

She was incoherent: sobbing, shuddering, incapable of answering his questions. He guided her back to the ambulance and eased her down onto the step. “I’m her doctor,” he said to the paramedic. “Family doctor. Do you have something you can give her?”

“I was about to give her some Promethazine,” the EMT said, looking at John a little doubtfully.

“Yeah, good.  That’s good,” John said.  Then to Lizzie, “Lizzie, honey.  They’re going to give you something now to make you feel better. It’ll help.”  He doubted she even heard him.  “Do you have her things?” he asked the paramedic. “Her phone? I need to call her family.”

Sherlock had hung back behind the tape, watching in silence. The police and emergency personnel trampling in and out of the house had already made unreadable any evidence he might have found on the ground, but he could see from the snow that they hadn’t been around the outside of the house yet. “Lestrade,” he said to the policeman guarding the line of tape, and made a perfunctory show of the detective inspector’s badge. He started up the walkway, searching the ground for anything the local force might have accidentally left undestroyed, then broke off and circled the house to the right. Footprints in the snow led from the back alley gate to the home’s rear entrance, where the door had been kicked in. Two men, size ten and eleven boots; Karrimor Skidos on Ten; Puratex on Eleven; both of them in the neighborhood of six-one and six-two in height. Logical: a large man like Hampton, trained as as fighter, would not be easy to subdue. He used his glass and a small pocket torch to study the marks on the door where it had been kicked in, then circled the rest of the exterior without finding evidence of more intruders. The front door, like the back, had been kicked in. Simultaneous front and rear assault, then, catching Hampton by surprise. 

“Lestrade,” he said to the policeman at the front door, with another sketchy wave of the badge and without waiting for acknowledgement. In the foyer he stopped again. The place had been destroyed: someone was very obviously looking for something. On the floor of the main room, in front of the overturned and shredded sofa and just visible from the door, lay a body covered with a yellow plastic tarp. Elizabeth Hampton’s purse lay on the floor nearby where she had dropped it in her shock on walking into the scene. On the console table in the foyer a little wicker basket held several sets of keys and a well-worn black leather wallet. One key set lay atop several receipts with the current date stamped on them. Sherlock picked them up, leafed through them--and stopped. The fifth slip of paper wasn’t a receipt. He stuffed it quickly into his pocket and moved on.

He circled through the kitchen where he paused at the table, knelt, and used the blade of his pocket knife to sweep a few flakes of grey and black powder into a small plastic bag. He pocketed the bag and glanced into the rest of the ground floor rooms where he found the same disarray and destruction. Sherlock read volumes in the chaos, but it was what he didn’t find that most interested him: the wooden crate of carboys. Clearly the murderers got what they came for. Without the crate the police had no hope of interpreting this crime for what it was, and that suited Sherlock just fine.

He returned to the main room and crouched next to the body. He lifted the corner of the sheet: Hampton.  He’d been tortured: cigarette burns covered his naked torso, four fingernails on his left hand were ripped out, and the index finger of his right hand had been hacked off. Merry Christmas, Sherlock thought. Clear bruising around the upper arms showed where Hampton had been restrained, confirming the fact of least three assailants. What killed him, however, was the bullet fired point-blank into his forehead that carried away most of the back of his head. 

Sherlock dropped the sheet and looked up--straight into John’s face. John couldn’t actually see the body--Sherlock knelt on the far side of it and the sheet blocked John’s view--but he had gone deathly pale.

“John,” Sherlock said. It was a warning not to approach any closer.

John stood clenching and unclenching his left hand. He had to ask, but his throat was so tight he could barely get the word out. “Hamp?”

Sherlock gave a barely perceptible nod, and John turned on his heel and plunged back outside.

Sherlock rose and took another look around the room, but he hadn’t missed anything and he knew it.

John had stopped on the front lawn and stood with his hands on his knees, trying to breathe. Not Hamp, he thought. Not now. Not after Afghanistan, not after he got home. And Lizzie: oh, God, how is she going to cope alone? He thought of their little girl. He couldn’t stand it: another friend killed violently, and for what? For nothing. For a rock. He straightened and stared out over the snow-covered rooftops, seeing neither them nor the police nor the gathered crowd, and he swore to kill the people who had done this.

Sherlock approached silently from behind, and although he couldn’t see John’s face it didn’t require the world’s greatest detective to know what he was thinking.

John felt Sherlock’s hand on his shoulder. He stood perfectly still. “Sherlock,” he said.

Just that one word, but Sherlock understood the appeal for his help and the promise that John would find these men with or without him. Sherlock had only one word in reply. “Yes,” he said.

 

0 0 0 0 0

 

They found a table in the window of a late-night diner in Aylesbury’s main street. John had said nothing on the way to the restaurant and now sat with his hands clasped on the table before him, staring out the window past their reflections. 

Sherlock didn’t waste time with expressions of sympathy or comfort. He was focused wholly on the case and he needed John to focus, too. He’d found a major lead on the console table and he knew how much danger John was now in. “John,” he said, looking into his face.

“I’m fine,” John said absently, patently lying. But Sherlock wasn’t asking about his mental state right now. 

“John.”

“I said I’m fine--” John began, then realized that’s not what Sherlock was after.

Sherlock leant forward. “John. I need you to listen to me. Really. Listen. What happened to your friend: it’s all over that damned stone. They know he gave it to you and they’ll be coming for you now.”

John blinked. “What are you...? How would they know that I have it?”

Sherlock didn't answer but his eyes never left John, and suddenly John understood. He shook his head, refusing to believe it. “Hamp would never--”

Sherlock stood up so abruptly that he knocked his chair over. “You’re out of this,” he snapped, and his voice was colder than John had ever heard it. "I’ll move faster on my own.” He reached for his phone. “Lestrade can send a car for you--”

Then John, too, was on his feet. “Don’t you dare.”

“Then focus,” Sherlock snarled. “Feel later. Focus now.” 

They glared at each other, looking wild, and suddenly John realized that Sherlock was right. He was a liability to both of them unless he could set his emotions aside.

John drew himself up, pulled his shoulders back, and Sherlock saw him make the decision, saw him pack the pain up and store it away. Sherlock sat down again, pulled the slip of paper from his pocket, and slid it across to John. “This was in the house,” he said. 

‘8191,’ John read. The rest of the message was written in some kind of cipher. He looked up. “It’s gibberish.”

“It’s code.”

“Can you read it?”

“In time, yes. The first four numbers are a name. 8191.”

“Yeah, so?”

“It’s a Mersenne prime.”

John was in no mood for a tutorial. “Sherlock,” he began angrily.

“It’s the smuggler’s name,” Sherlock said.  “Mersenne.  Look at the form of the note.  Four digits, a comma, and then the body of the message.  The number is the addressee.  Look him up.  There can’t be that many.  Try businesses first.  People like this don’t work from home.”

John reached for his phone, opened Query, and after a few minutes of searching found Mersenne, Ltd., a mining company with offices in the City. Owned by Philippe Mersenne. “Here,” he said, turning the phone toward Sherlock. “It’s the only one connected to a business.”

“Philippe Mersenne,” Sherlock said.  “And Philip Martin was the alias from the club.  It fits.”

“24 Factory Road, East Ham,” John read.

“Factory’s by the river,” Sherlock said, returning to the code. “Probably a warehouse. Most of the businesses are, in that section of town.”

John watched while Sherlock scribbled notes as he worked on the code. Finally he gave a little cry of triumph.

“That was fast.”

“They’re just smugglers,” Sherlock said. “They’re not trying to impress MI6. They just want something obscure to causal readers.”  He showed the translation to John.  

720 Musgrave Road.  Three p.m.  Thursday.’ 

“It doesn’t give a date,” John said.  “How do you know which Thursday it means?”  

“If it were any but the subsequent Thursday they’d have included a date,” Sherlock said.  “It’s assumed.”

“Okay...” John was trying to keep up. “Mersenne is the smuggler. He picked up the wrong package at the club and he killed Hamp trying to get his own package back.”

“He did get it back. There was no crate or any other bottles at the house. He’s got the jewels from those bottles. What he’s missing is the Khan. He needs that stone, John. He can’t face the Russians without it.”

"The Russians?”

“Russian mafia. Bratva. Solntsevskaya Bratva, at a guess, but there’s no way to be certain with what we have now.”

“Why Russian?”

“The bottle. The blue carboy.”

“Yes?”

“It was made with a manufacturing technique specific to Eastern Europe and the old Soviet bloc countries. Fairly primitive, but they still use it today. The Great Khan was discovered in Russia and housed in St. Petersburg." He reached into his pocket and produced the little plastic bag filled with grey dust. "The cigarette ash dropped at Hampton's house: Sobranie. Made in Russia since 2005. It makes sense, John. Russia’s been in a state of political upheaval for a hundred years. The law there is barely even a guideline. The Bratva has its fingers in everything and it’s branching out: Europe, England, America. Gems are the easiest things in the world to smuggle, and with law enforcement practically non-existent and everyone open to bribes anyway it’s an easy source of cash for the gangs.”

“Mersenne’s a Russian gangster, then.”

Sherlock shook his head. “He’s probably just a middle-man. A mule, almost certainly with no knowledge of the real structure. He might not even know who he’s working for. The killers, though: At least one of them is a Bratva enforcer.”

“How do you know?”

Sherlock hesitated. “I know the signs."

John didn't pursue it. Instead he said, “The drop for the rest of the jewels isn’t for two days. What are we going to do in the meantime?”

“We’re going after Mersenne. He’s looking for you now, remember.”

“We could go to Baker Street and wait for him?”

“No. Tonight. Before he expects it. We have to push this, John. Push it hard and keep them off balance.” 

John considers. “The warehouse?”

“The warehouse.”

0 0 0 0 0

 

By the time they reached the waterfront warehouse district in East Ham it was nearly 11 o'clock. Sherlock give the cab driver an address for an apartment building on Albert Road, which served the dual purpose of misdirecting the driver and allowing them to reconnoiter the neighborhood as they went. They walked west down Albert, hopped the mesh fencing for the railroad, crossed the tracks, and hopped the fence on the other side, stepping out of the weeds onto Factory Road. Except for the usual city noise of the residential neighborhood a block distant the night was quiet and still. The last Woolwich Ferry had sailed, so they expected no vehicle traffic and in fact saw none.

Twenty-four Factory Road consisted of two ten-unit warehouses with a stretch of pavement between where trucks pulled in to load and unload from the bays. Units numbered from 1-10A lined the east side of the parking area and and 1-10B the west. Some businesses within the little industrial park occupied just one unit, while others used two or more. Outside the main entrance gate a To Let billboard advertised a standard industrial estate with refurbished units from 800 to 12,500 square feet. The Mersenne Mining Company, Ltd. leased two connected units at the southwest corner of the park. 

This time of night the gate was closed, although it was not a very formidable obstacle. It was a steel fence and gate with pickets but no razor wire or any real means of keeping people out, although as usual cameras on posts kept unblinking watch. Sherlock wasn't satisfied with the camera placement, so they continued west past the two warehouse buildings and reached another drive allowing access behind them. There another gate stood open. Just inside a long commercial lorry was parked parallel to the back of the west warehouse, and eight other commercial vehicles were backed up to the various loading bays of the warehouse, although none were running and the overhead doors of the bays were all closed. More importantly, there were no cameras.

They slipped between the parallel parked lorry and the warehouse's outer wall. The truck shielded them from the view of anyone in the road, although not a car had passed since they exited the cab. Once they emerged from the shadow of the truck it was dark enough to make their way to Mersenne’s warehouse without fear of being seen. Units 9B and 10B, in the southwest corner of the complex, were conjoined into a single large unit with a small sign reading “Mersenne Mining” to the side of one of its two trucking bays. A metal stairway led to a small landing and a man door at the level of the truck bays. Sherlock made a quick job of the lock and they stepped inside.

One large center space where palettes were offloaded and stored, concrete flooring, and a single light left burning at the far end, near the main entrance that would exit to the pavement space between the warehouses. Grubby offices lined both walls, and midway along the right hand side several elderly vending machines glowed from within a break room. Mersenne’s personal office, labeled with a placard reading “P. Mersenne," was on the left, nearly all the way to the other door. Sherlock picks that lock as well.

Inside the dusty, one-room office a messy desk occupied the center of the room. Behind it two four-drawer file cabinets and a floor safe took up most of the back wall.

"Lights?" John asked.

"Yes," Sherlock said. "There won't be anyone here at this hour and we won't be long. Check the desk, then the files," he added. "See if you can find a home address and anything that might connect him to the Russians.”

It took John less than a minute to turn up a two year-old date book with Mersenne's home address on the first page. He tore the page out and pocketed it. “Got the address.”

Sherlock grunted. “Check the files.”

The first two drawers of the file cabinet yielded nothing, but in the back of the third was a manila envelope labeled "8191." John upended it on the desk and out fluttered a pile of paper slips bearing encoded messages like the one Sherlock had found in Aylesbury. “Got it,” John said, and he heard a click as Sherlock defeated the safe.

“Me, too,” Sherlock said. Inside the safe were a dozen or so little baize bags of loose gemstones, plus the three carboys taken from Hampton's house: one deep red, one dark green, and one white, all made of the same type of heavy, opaque glass as the one that held the topaz. Sherlock smiled, but there was no humor in his pale grey eyes.

“Sherlock,” John said. “Look: more of that code. Can you read these?”

“They’re all dates," Sherlock said, sorting through them. "See the 8191 again? The rest of it...dates and times.” Suddenly he seized one with a delighted cry. John could see that it didn't match the format of the others. It was much longer, for a start, and he didn't see the “8191” designation anywhere. 

Sherlock scanned it eagerly. “This is the key to their system,” he said. “It must have been one of the original communiques. They color-code the bottles to match the kind of gem being smuggled inside it. That way no one ever has to ask or guess. There’s never any doubt. Red for rubies, green for emeralds.” He pointed to the safe with the three bottles.

“White for...diamonds?” John asked.

“Exactly.”

“And blue for blue topaz.”

“Sapphires, more commonly,” Sherlock said, “but in this case, yes.” He looks around. “Anything else in those files?”

“Not so far.”

“It doesn’t matter. This is enough. We have Mersenne. Come on.” He switched off the light and listened at the door before opening it. John knew it had to be done, but he shifted impatiently.

They were half-way to the man door through which they'd entered when it opened to admit four very tall, very muscular men. They were chatting between themselves but they stopped in amazement at the sight of John and Sherlock.

“Oi!” one cried. “What the bloody hell? Who are you? What are you doing here? How’d you get in here?”

Sherlock regarded them coolly. "Interesting," he said. "Newtown patois with a Russian accent."

Beside him John realized he was facing Hamp's murderers, and he tensed visibly.

“Last chance, mate."

“Not your mate,” Sherlock said. He backed up, though, slowly, and put his hands up a bit, like a man hoping to avoid a conflict. John moved with him and Sherlock wished, not for the first time, that John were a better actor, because everything in his eyes and stance said there was nothing he would rather do than kill these guys.

Sherlock backed up until they were abeam a mechanic's workbench, and then he stopped.

“Put these guys in the river,” the gang leader growled.

The enforcers split up, two heading for John, two for Sherlock. Sherlock turned quickly to his left, away from the attackers and toward the work table, as though he were turning run, but as he pivoted he shrugged out of his greatcoat. His momentum as he turned helped him shed it, and he spun until he faced the oncoming thugs again, caught the coat with his right hand as it slid off his arm, and swept a three-foot lug wrench off the bench with his left. He flung the coat toward the faces of the men advancing on him and swung the metal bar left-handed hard against the knees of the man to his left. The man shrieked as his right kneecap shattered, but before his leg had buckled Sherlock's backswing hit him in the left elbow, crushing it with an audible crack. The entire balletic maneuver was over in less than two seconds.

The second gangster threw Sherlock’s coat to one side, stepped over his screaming friend, and came on. Sherlock deftly shifted the bar to his right hand and swung it low again, at the man's knees. The man jumped back, giving Sherlock time to grab a length of chain off the wall near the bench.

Sherlock let him come, and when he was within range he flicked out the chain, which wrapped around the man's right arm. Sherlock pulled hard, and in spite of the weight difference between them the gangster stumbled forward, off-balance. Just before they made contact Sherlock head-butted the man, and although he jumped to do it the gangster was so tall that the blow took him in the nose, destroying it. Blood sprayed everywhere. Sherlock turned hard to his left, drew up his elbow, and smashed it into the man's windpipe, dropping him to the floor.

Sherlock had only half-heard the fight going on behind him, and until now had been too busy to see anything. When he turned he saw the gang leader lying curled in a pool of his own blood, crying. He watched as John used his left arm to block a wild, wide right from his other opponent, trap the guy’s arm, sweep his near leg, and drop him to his knees while still holding his arm, squeezing it alongside his own body. The gangster's left arm remained free to potentially block John's strike, but John didn't swing from the bleachers. The instant the man's knees hit the floor he drove his right hand straight and fast from his centerline, and twisted from his hips. The heel of his hand drove into the gangster's face with all John's weight and fury behind it. Two more hard, fast strikes and then he dropped the arm, put both hands behind the man's head, and stepping to the side he raised his own knee to meet the thug's face. Three times he brought his knee up, and he showed no sign of stopping. He worked in silence, with deadly intent.

“John," Sherlock called. “John, that’s enough. John--!” he cried. He stepped in, caught John's arm, and pulled him aside--then stepped hastily back as John rounded on him, his blood up, tensed to spring, his eyes wild. "No!" Sherlock put his hands up.

John's reason finally caught up with his reflexes, and he stopped.

“They’re finished,” Sherlock said in a low voice. “That’s enough.”

John was splattered with blood, none of it his, and still breathing hard, but he put his hands up, ducked his head, and took a step back: putting Sherlock in charge.

The warehouse contained no dearth of cordage they could use to secure their prisoners, although only Alexei, their leader, remained potentially capable of putting up any kind of resistance. Only one of the others was even semi-conscious. Alexei, however, they dragged into the office and installed in the chair.

“Now, then,” Sherlock said to him. “Most people in this situation would make you tell them about your little smuggling operation. I’m not most people. I’m going to tell you what’s going on, and then you’re going to answer any questions my friend here might have.”

Alexei stared at him with his one good eye. The other was already swollen shut and blood from his ravaged face still actively dripped onto his shirt. It was probably as well that Sherlock intended to do the talking.

“You work for Philippe Marsenne," Sherlock began. "Mersenne works for the Solntsevskaya Bratva.”

Alexi looked surprised in spite of himself. “How do you know that?”

“I’m Sherlock Holmes,” Sherlock said with an imperious lift of his chin. “It’s my job to know things that other people don’t. Mersenne is a mule for Solntsevskaya," he continued. "He received a package yesterday. A package from The Carboy Club. The Carboy Club is a Russian front company that uses color-coded liquor bottles to smuggle gemstones out of Russia. Unfortunately there was a bit of a mix-up and Mersenne picked up a crate without the gems inside. The man who picked up the crate with the gems did so accidentally. That’s the man you killed earlier tonight.”

Alexi spit contemptuously. “You don’t have any evidence."

Sherlock smiled coldly. “Oh, I have a lot of evidence."

“Like what?”

“Sobranie.”

“What?”

Sherlock reached toward Alexei and the man shrank back, but Sherlock plucked a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. “Sobranie,” he said again, holding up the packet. “Cigarette ash is very distinctive if you know what to look for. The ash from the crime scene will match the ash produced by these cigarettes. Not too many Britishers walking around with this brand in their pockets.”

“So you have cigarettes,” Alexei said. He wasn't bright enough to fully appreciate the value of forensic evidence of the type Sherlock had collected. “So what?”

“Oh, I have more than cigarettes,” Sherlock said. “I have the smugglers’ code. 8191. Sound familiar?”

“So?”

Sherlock shook his head sadly and glanced at John. “So little imagination,” he sighed. “I have the carboys. In fact, I have the blue carboy.”

That got Alexei's attention.

“Well,” Sherlock corrected himself, “he has the blue carboy.” He pointed at John.

Alexei's eyes went to John and he actually shrank back in the chair: that unassuming-looking man was the one they'd been sent out to kill tonight. He'd just thrashed Alexei and one of Alexei's men into a bloody huddle, and now he was staring at Alexei as though he'd like nothing better than to finish the job.

“Yes,” Sherlock said. “The man Mersenne sent you out to kill tonight.”

“The second man,” John said between his teeth. “Only I’m not pinned to the floor being tortured.”

“What do you want?” Alexei asked, not taking his eyes from John.

“I want Mersenne's Russian contact.”

“No,” Alexei said automatically.

“John, get that prybar.” Sherlock pointed to the workbench outside.

John turned to obey, but at a sudden gasp from Alexei he turned back. Sherlock was standing as he had been before, but Alexei was now pale, sweating, and staring terrified at Sherlock.

“Okay,” Alexi cried. “Okay. What do you want to know?”

“Phone number,” Sherlock snapped.

“030 7930 1070,” Alexi quavered.

Sherlock turned away from him, withdrew his phone, and entered the number.

John wasn't on the same page anymore. “What’re you doing?"

“Texting,” Sherlock said. “We send the Bratva a text in their own code telling them that Mersenne has the bottles and wants to meet here immediately for the exchange.”

“We have the bottles.”

“Exactly. The Bratva aren't going to be happy when they arrive and find an empty safe.” Sherlock looked at Alexei. “Tell John what the Bratva will do when they think Mersenne has double-crossed them.”

Alexei looked from one to the other and licked his lips nervously. “They will kill him," he said. "They will take a long time to do it.”

“Hampton was your friend,” Sherlock said, his voice low. “If I send this text Mersenne is a dead man. What do you want to do?"

John stared at the phone in Sherlock's hand. He thought about his friend Hamp and about Lizzie and about how much Hamp had loved her. He thought about what he saw at their house tonight, about what Lizzie saw, and how she would never, ever be able to erase it from her memory. He thought about what he’d seen in war, and he'd never expected it to be brought home to a man who survived that violence as a hero, only to be murdered over a mistake--a mistake about a rock--by men who weren’t fit to breathe the same air.

Sherlock watched his face, guessing at least in part what he was thinking, and he was neither surprised nor dismayed when John said in a voice distorted by emotion, “Send it.” It was what Sherlock would have done.

Sherlock pressed the button and raised the phone to his ear. A moment later he said, “Lestrade.”

John gaped at him.

“We’ve found some people you might like to meet,” Sherlock said conversationally. “Twenty-four Factory Road. Bring a couple of ambulances, as well.”

John glared at him, outraged. “What are you doing? I thought--what about the text? You were going to send a text!” Sherlock's eyes never left him and John suddenly realized what he'd done.

"Damn you," he said quietly. It took all the self-control he had left, but he turned and left the office without killing Sherlock.

 

* * * * *

Sherlock and DI Lestrade watched as EMTs loaded the last of the three most badly-injured thugs into an ambulance. Alexei waited handcuffed in the back of a police car.

“Mersenne’s on his way to the Yard," Lestrade said. "We’ve got people going through his house now.”

Sherlock gave no sign of having heard, but Lestrade was used to that. “So,” he said, “Russian mafia gem smuggling ring. That’s a little bit out of the ordinary even for you two. You going to tell me how you ended up here?”

“A man was killed earlier tonight in Aylesbury, Bucks.”

“Yeah?” Lestrade didn't know anything about it: not his jurisdiction.

“The victim was a friend of John’s. Army buddy.”

“Oh, God.” Lestrade glanced over at John, who was sitting well away from them on the edge of one of the loading bays, his feet dangling, his hands folded in his lap. He happened at that moment to be gazing off in the other direction and didn't notice Lestrade looking at him. He was too far away to hear them. “That explains the ambulances, I suppose."

“Mm.”

“The victim was involved in the smuggling ring?”

“No. He had something they wanted, though. Mersenne and the victim belonged to the same London club. The victim--Hampton--accidentally picked up a package there meant for Mersenne. A shipment of jewels. Mersenne traced him to Bucks and this group--” gestured at the departing ambulance “--murdered him for the return of the package.”

Lestrade frowned. “But if they got what they wanted, why murder the poor bastard?”

Sherlock shrugged. “Russian mafia. Murder’s kind of a hobby with them.”

“But how’d you two find out about it?” 

“Hampton came to visit John yesterday afternoon while he was in London on business. Left his gloves behind in the foyer. John called later to say he'd found them, and the police answered the phone.”

Lestrade accepted that at face value. “Well,” he said after a pause. “I’d better be off.” He glanced at John again. “Tell him I’m sorry about his friend, will you?”

“Hm.” 

“I mean it, Sherlock. For God’s sake, do something human for once.”

* * * * *

 

Sherlock sidled up to John where he sat on the edge of the loading bay. He knew John better than he'd known anyone in his life, but he didn't always understand him. Just now he still wasn't completely certain of what his reception was going to be. He cleared his throat. John turned to look at him and Sherlock said carefully, "You’re still angry."

John didn't answer right away. “You’d have sent that text,” he said finally. “If it had been up to you, you’d have sent that text.”

“Yes.”

“But you wouldn’t send it for me.”

“No.”

John stared at Sherlock then. He stared at him for so long that Sherlock fidgeted. He wasn't used to being studied the way he studied other people, and he wondered what John was thinking.

John finally looked away, out into the darkness. He took a deep breath, held it, let it out. Then he said, very quietly, “Thank you.”

 

* * * * *

 

Christmas Eve morning arrived in Baker Street. Breakfast was over but John and Sherlock lingered at the breakfast table, sipping coffee and reading the newspaper.

“Oh, my God,” John exclaimed suddenly.

“What is it?”

“Did you know about this?”

“John, in spite of popular belief I can’t read minds. Did I know about what?”

“Mersenne’s dead.”

“Is he?” Sherlock was utterly unmoved by the news, but the polite thing was to ask a follow-up question. “How?”

“In his prison cell. They were holding him for trial. They think it might have been suicide, but...” John read a bit further. “...they don’t know how he could have done it. Says there were no marks of violence on the body.”

“Never eat the bologna sandwiches in the lockup, John.”

John stared at him. “You think the mafia got to him and poisoned him? In prison?”

“I think he lived by the sword.”

John thought about that a minute. “You knew that was going to happen.”

“Not a mind-reader.” Sherlock turned over a page of the newspaper.

“No: You knew Mersenne wasn’t going to make it to trial because the Russians never got their topaz back. You knew they’d think he stole it from them even if we did turn him over to the police.”

Sherlock shrugged. “I thought it was likely.”

John shook his head. “Not ‘likely.‘ You’re Sherlock Holmes, remember?”

Sherlock cocked an eye at him.

“You don’t do ‘likely.’ You do ‘certain.’”

“And all this time I thought you weren’t paying attention.” Sherlock ducked behind the paper again.

John didn't know what to say. Sherlock had, obviously, protected him from making a decision he’d regret while still making sure that Hampton got justice. Before he could go very much farther along that line, however, they heard Mrs. Hudson coming up the steps, humming “We Wish You A Merry Christmas.”

“Oh, God,” Sherlock groaned under his breath.

“Ooh-hoo,” Mrs. Hudson called, tapping the door frame. “Merry Christmas!” In one hand she carried a fully-stuffed gift bag and in the other their mail. John hurried over to help her with it.

“I’ve brought you boys a little something for Christmas,” she said. “You know, you really should get a tree to put your things under.” She waved the little bundle of mail and laid it on the cafe table.

John took the bag and set it on the kitchen table. “Mrs. Hudson," he chided gently. "You didn't have to bring us anything. Thank you. No tree," he added in a whispered aside. “Sherlock would ignite it to study the char patterns it made on the walls.”

She laughed. “You’re probably right, dear. Oh--there’s a gypsy tart in here for you, Sherlock.”

Sherlock didn't look up from the paper.

“Sherlock," John said.

Well, if he must: “Thank you."

John found a place in the fridge for the foil-wrapped tart and Mrs. Hudson carried the bag into the sitting room with the intention of setting the gifts out on the mantel. She started humming “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” again.

“I can’t get that song out of my head,” she admitted. “It’s pretty, though, don’t you think? I love carols--they’re so cheerful--and that’s my favorite one. What’s your favorite?” she asked John.

John considered. “Oh...Coventry Carol, I think," he said.

“Ooh, that's a beautiful song. It's a bit--” she began, but Sherlock abruptly lowered the newspaper and glared at her and she quickly changed the half-formed “sad” to “traditional.” Sherlock put the paper up again.

“I guess it is, really,” John agreed. “But it’s pretty.”

Sherlock sniffed.

“Now,” Mrs. Hudson said, taking a present from the bag. “No peeking before tomorrow morning.”

Sherlock was forbidden by long tradition from picking up presents and identifying them before they'd been unwrapped, but from the way he was eyeing the boxes it was clear that he didn't need to handle them. “Jumper,” he said of the first one she brought out. “Socks.”

“Sherlock,” Mrs. Hudson tutted.

“Give it a rest,” John sighed. He reached past Sherlock and retrieved a brightly-wrapped package from the clutter. “This is from both of us,” he told Mrs. Hudson as he handed it to her, “but it was Sherlock’s idea.”

“It was not.”

“Oh, thank you!” she exclaimed. “You boys didn’t have to do that.”

“I told him that,” Sherlock noted.

John didn't even bother to correct him that time. He kissed her affectionately on the cheek. “Of course we did. Merry Christmas, Mrs. Hudson."

She patted his arm. “Merry Christmas, John. Merry Christmas, Sherlock.”

0 0 0 0 0 

 

John was past ready for a quiet night in, and that Christmas Eve it was quiet: fluffy, freshly-falling snow muffled what little noise drifted up from the street, there was no chance of a client, the TV was off, and a fire crackled in the fireplace. Supper was over, the kitchen was--well, the kitchen wasn't clean, but the dishes were washed and put away. John came down from his room in pajama bottoms and dressing gown with a Patrick O’Brian novel in his hand. As he passed through the kitchen he noticed the mail still on the cafe table: there were a couple of bills, but also four Christmas cards that had just made it under the wire. He carried those to the sitting room where Sherlock sat in his leather chair, reading, and quiet for once.  
Two of the cards were from former clients and addressed to both of them, while the other three were addressed to John alone. When he had read each card he deposited it in a little basket on the end table.

Sherlock saw him go still when he reached the red envelope. He could see perfectly well who it was from and he watched attentively as John stared at the envelope. He looked at it for so long that Sherlock began to wonder whether he would open it, but he finally slid the letter opener under the flap.

Dear John, [the card said] It’s been two days since your incredibly generous gift arrived, and I still don’t know what I can possibly say to thank you. It’s by far the kindest, most generous thing anyone has ever done for us. It’s going to be hard to explain to Amy how she lost her daddy, but at least now I know I’ll never have to worry about how to pay for her education. Thank you so much. We’ll be in your debt forever, and I know Hamp would say the same. Love, Lizzie.” 

John read the letter twice before he looked up, utterly baffled. He couldn't even decide what to ask first.

“Problem?” Sherlock said.

“Yeah. I don’t know. This card. It’s from Lizzie Hampton. She’s thanking me for something and I have no idea what she’s talking about.”

“Hm. May I?”

John handed him the letter.

Sherlock tilted the envelope to the light, peered intently at it from every angle, then repeated the process with the card. Read the note inside, then handed card and envelope back to John.

“Well?”

“It appears," Sherlock said in his rapid-fire, expository way, "that someone has deposited one hundred thirty-seven thousand, four hundred and fifty-three pounds into your bank account, stolen one of your cheques, forged your handwriting, then sent the cheque made out to Elizabeth Hampton for the same amount. If you reconciled your cheque book more often than once every eight months you’d have noticed it before now. Obviously."

This cleared nothing up for John. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The Hermitage Museum was touchingly grateful when I returned their rock," Sherlock said in his normal voice. "They’ve been offering a reward for its safe return since it was stolen in 1909. I believe the original sum was the equivalent of two thousand pounds sterling. Taking interest and inflation into account, over a period of one hundred and four years that reward came as of last week to one hundred thirty-seven thousand, four hundred and fifty-three pounds.”

“You gave the reward money to Lizzie.”

“You gave the reward money to her, John. You read the letter. Twice. Do try to keep up.”

"Sherlock...” John said wonderingly.

Sherlock reached for his violin. “That stone has done a lot of damage since it was discovered,” he said. “Centuries of damage. It was time to balance the scales a bit.”

John looked down at the card in his hand. It was a little much, in combination: his first Christmas without Mary, his friend Hamp brutally murdered, and Sherlock making sure that Lizzie was taken care of. He shook his head. “Sherlock...” he said again.

Sherlock frowned. John was in real danger of devolving this conversation into sentiment, and that would be intolerable. He stood up abruptly and in a casual, offhanded tone he said, “Did you know that blue topaz is the state gemstone of the American state of Texas?” John looked up at him, baffled by the non-sequitur. Sherlock turned toward the window, wedged the violin under his chin, and lifted the bow. “Blue topaz,” he said, as he produced the first haunting notes of Coventry Carol, “is also considered a symbol of friendship. Merry Christmas, John.”


End file.
